1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a means and method of stimulating human skin, particularly while a person is bathing and applicable particularly to stimulate and exfoliate the skin on a person's back.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The skin that covers the human body is one of the most important organs of the human body. The human skin lies in three layers: epidermis, dermis and subcutaneous fat. The purpose of the instant invention is exfoliation and preservation of the health of the epidermis, believed to be the front line of defense for the human body. Stated in other words, the skin, draped over the human body, forms the barrier between what's inside the body and what's outside the body. It protects the human body from a multitude of external forces. It is known that the outer layer of the epidermis comprises a protective covering called the stratum corneum and consists of fifteen to forty layers of flattened skin cells, or corneocytes that have migrated up from deeper regions and which replace themselves about once a month. It is for the purpose of cleansing the skin of these discarded corneocytes and preserving the health of the skin that the present invention has been designed.
A preliminary patentability and novelty search has revealed the existence of the following United States patents which, in one way or another, are useful for scrubbing or massaging the human body. None of these patents appear to disclose the novel structure of the instant invention as described, illustrated and claimed herein.
4,047,2594,053,9604,704,7595,277,3895,600,8645,628,0835,774,9075,784,7226,053,4646,227,7426,370,722D-344,633D-354,587D-388,547D-400,658D-403,119D-444,9165,779,653
One of the important objects of the present invention is the provision of a device that is simple to fabricate by injection molding in a configuration that enables it to be detachably mounted on a bathroom wall or a shower wall and useful for massaging, scrubbing or exfoliating the skin on a person's back during the process of bathing, but which may be used as a hand-held device for massaging, scrubbing or exfoliating other areas of the human body whether during the bathing process or apart from the bathing process.
Another object of the invention is the provision of a scrubbing or exfoliating device the working face of which is undulated and formed from independent and elastically resilient “prongs” or projections of different lengths so as to enable the massaging, scrubbing or exfoliation of surfaces of the human body that are irregular, such as, by way of example, the hip area, shoulders, shoulder blades, hollow of the back, elbows, knees or heel areas of the feet.
Still another object of the invention is the provision of a scrubbing device designed and configured to cooperate with and to be detachably interconnected with other like devices to form a variety of differently configured arrays formed by a multitude of interconnected scrubbing devices.
Yet another object of the invention is the provision of a scrubbing and exfoliating device provided with independent and spaced “prongs” arranged in concentric circular patterns or other selected pattern and formed of different lengths within each pattern to enable the user to use a selected amount of pressure on the prongs or elastically resilient projections to secure different intensities of pressure and scrubbing or exfoliation action on selected areas of the skin.
The invention possesses other objects and features of advantage, some of which, with the foregoing, will become apparent from the following description and the drawings. It is to be understood however that the invention is not limited to the embodiment illustrated and described since it may be embodied in various forms within the scope of the appended claims.